The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (52 page)

Fremont had no such pleasant reflections to shorten his way, but trod the paths of self-disgust he’d worn into his soul. When they reached Minchin Street, he was almost eager to confess himself to Doctor St Cloud and receive either his forgiveness or his just punishment.

There was no answer to Blake’s knock or his call, but the latch lifted when he tried it, and no outcry greeted the opening door or their timid entrance. The room was dark, save for one candle burning on a long table drifted deep in books and papers and a low fire smoldering in the narrow hearth. A man sat beside it, his hands folded around a book on his lap. When he heard the door, he turned, regarded Blake and Fremont blankly, and turned again to the fire.

“Doctor St Cloud?” It was a real question. The young doctor’s face was gray, unshaven, his eyes red and strained. The room smelled of damp and ink and old, musty books.

“Go away,” he said. “I’m working.”

Fremont made a choking noise that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob. Blake glared at him, daring him to flee. Fremont glared back. “It’s Fremont, sir,” he said, holding Blake’s gaze. “Fremont and Blake. We have something to tell you.”

“It must wait until the test is done.” Doctor St Cloud’s voice, at least, was as it had always been, deep and clear and reasonable.

“I’m afraid it can’t wait, sir,” said Blake apologetically. “Not until the debate, at any rate.”

Fremont decided to grasp the poker by the hot end. “It’s about the debate, you see. Lord Nicholas Galing thought you were trying to restore the monarchy. He—”

St Cloud lifted his hand to stop him. “I don’t often have guests,” he said apologetically. “This is my only chair.” He gestured toward the bed. “Please, sit. Who is Lord Nicholas Galing, and how did he come to be interested in me?”

For the second time that night, Fremont told his story. It wasn’t as bad as the first time. To be sure, Blake was radiating disapproval as a tanner’s yard radiates stink, but Doctor St Cloud listened to his every word with an eager intensity, nodding from time to time, asking questions when Henry faltered.

“Interesting,” he said at last. “These nobles are a suspicious crew, imagining threats to their power and influence behind every bush and under every black robe. They have been so since Alcuin came South, and probably before. They disliked the kings. But the wizards they hated.” He looked down at the fat leather-bound book he held in his hands.

Silence lengthened. Henry shifted his seat on the hard mattress, but Doctor St Cloud made no sign he’d heard. It was as if he’d forgotten the existence of his two visitors.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Justis Blake tightly. “Is that all?”

Doctor St Cloud glanced up. “Is what all?”

“Fremont here tells you he’s been spying on you for some noble who is looking for evidence of a monarchist plot, and all you’ve said is that you find his tale interesting.” Blake was clearly struggling to keep his tone properly respectful. “Aren’t you worried?” he continued. “These men put Finn and Lindley in the Chop, and a couple of Northerners, too. We didn’t want to tell you this, but you need to know. Alaric Finn is dead. He killed himself when he was released. The Northerners have disappeared. This is serious business, sir. I’d be worried, were I you.”

Doctor St Cloud smiled gently. “Justis Blake. Dear, responsible Justis Blake. What a Crescent you would make, were you born noble. This news, for all its gravity, is the smallest of the ills that torment me. This is a time of testing for all of us—for you and for me, for Lord Galing and his master, for Theron Campion and his bride, for the parrot Crabbe, and for those Northern fools who call themselves the Companions of the King.”

Fremont said, “If I’ve been tested, I’ve failed miserably. I might as well kill myself, like poor Finn, and be done with it.”

“You’ve failed only if you think the test is over,” said St Cloud. “The Feast of Sowing approaches, but has not yet come.” With sudden energy, he pulled his chair up to the long table and laid the book on the papers. “Thank you for coming to warn me, Blake, Fremont. It was kindly and well done. You remind me that I have a great deal of work to do. I think I shall be forced to suspend my lectures completely until the challenge has been fought. Please tell the others.”

He glanced encouragingly toward the door and watched as first Fremont, and then Blake, reluctantly rose from the bed and walked out to the stairwell. Fremont descended straight-away, but Blake turned in the door and said, “What will you do, sir?”

Doctor St Cloud scrubbed his face with both hands. “Work, Blake. I need to work. Now go away and leave me alone.”

Feeling as though the world had gone mad and he the only sane man left in it, Blake slammed the door and pounded down the steps. He needed a drink; he needed to lose himself in Marianne’s sweet body. Doctor St Cloud and the rest of it would be there in the morning, as his mother used to say. Tonight, he’d had enough.

THERON REMAINED IN THE SAFETY OF HIS BELOVED HOUSE. He did not think it wise to see Genevieve again. Her letters, coming to him scented with her skin, sent him to his bed for relief. The thought of her dark hair lifted off her neck made him shiver. The wedding was a good idea. In a few months, he could satisfy himself on her whenever he wished. He wished it could be sooner. Perhaps they could move it up. How long could it take to plan a wedding, anyway?

Meanwhile, he prowled the odd and twisting corridors of the Riverside house, looking for diversion. There was something he needed, but nothing interested him. He could not read. He tried poetry, science, even sensational romances, but the words were only words, sounds represented by hard black shapes; he could not seem to get them to cling together and make sense. He could, he thought, listen to music. He would like that. But Sophia kept no musicians. So he drifted out into the streets of Riverside, looking for some.

Toward the end of the day, the island began to come awake. Theron wandered past tavern doors, listening for the sound of someone playing. At the Awl in Owl, an old blind Northern harper, who made music when he wasn’t too drunk and his harp wasn’t in pawn, had struck up a tune. The tavern stench of people and beer and boiling grease was too strong for Theron; but he leaned against an outside shutter, glad of the cool air, listening. He wanted to weep for love of the music and love of the people who were united with him in listening and loving it, too. A man came out of the tavern and nearly pissed on his boots in the twilight. When the man saw him, he swore and pulled out a knife, but Theron said, “Hush. Hush,” and drew silver from his purse, and gave it to the man to give to the harper.

He dreamed that night of a wild harping, a tune like the blind man’s but more filled with ornament, played by a man with gold around his wrists. Theron and his companions danced with knives, a pattern that allowed for no misstep. At first it was hard, but then it was easy. They knew they were being watched, and held their heads high, flashing their braided hair in the torchlight, their bodies nearly naked, their skin oiled and shining. Under a canopy, a group of men dressed in furs stood watching them dance. He felt the eyes of one upon him, heating the oil on his skin.

In the morning he was exhausted. He lay in bed until nearly noon, and then decided he should go to the Randalls’, and then decided that he should not. Instead he wrote Genevieve a letter all about his longing for her. He judged it quite fitting and poetic until he read it over and discovered it contained obscenities. He went down to the library, and word by word, copied out a love poem by Aria. He had discovered that if he wrote each word without looking at the next, he could do it clearly. At the end of the poem he added the line, “He speaks for me,” and signed it.

The next day, Genevieve wrote back to say she liked the poem, and wondered if he could tell her more about the author. He decided that a literary engagement would do very well, indeed—for one thing, it would be nice if she knew something about poetry when they were married. Theron took himself up to the bookshops of Lassiter’s Row to find something suitable. He found an Aria nicely bound and asked to have it delivered.

“Will you inscribe it, sir?” the bookseller asked. Theron took the pen, and could think of nothing to write but, “For G with love from TC.” Who was TC? he wondered. Did those lines and curves really represent him?

“The pen, sir?”

He had been drawing on his own hand,
TC
, covering himself with the letters. “Oh,” he laughed, and the man laughed with him, and Theron left, blushing.

To steady himself, he walked into a jeweler’s he knew; Katherine had taken him there to choose a ring for himself when he turned eighteen, a setting for one of the Tremontaine rubies. The jeweler recognized Lord Theron. He was sufficiently up on the gossip of the nobility to congratulate him on his engagement.

“And if you’re looking for a gift for the happy lady, my lord, we have a few little trinkets that I can show you.”

Theron looked at lockets and rings and brooches, but nothing caught his fancy. The jeweler smiled, and made a respectful quip about young love. “Well,” he concluded, “another time. But meanwhile I will show my lord something very splendid—a piece of work such as doesn’t come along every day.” He unlocked a leather case and brought it forth for inspection. “Weeks, my man was, working on this.” It was a collar, a necklace, all in well-wrought gold, each piece shaped and carved in a pleasing harmony of curves and curls. Its base was hung with moonstones like drops of water. Or tears, Theron thought, or the semen that glistens on the tip of a man’s tool.

“I’ll have this,” he said. “For my bride. A bride-gift. It’s appropriate. Please have it sent, and put it on my account.”

“Will that be the duchess’s account, my lord, or would you prefer to open your own account now for your new household?”

His new household? Yes, he’d discussed all this with Marcus, with Katherine, and with lawyers. On his marriage, Theron’s revenues would be increased, properties signed over to him; Genevieve’s family, of course, was providing some of them. His wife would want to buy jewels for herself, and she might buy them here, on credit. “My own account,” he said, “please.”

He went home and wrote to Marcus that he had exceeded his current funds. He dug the bill out of his pocket. The necklace cost the same as a carriage, more than most people earned in a year.
Far
exceeded his current funds, and could Marcus please see that the bill was covered by advancing money from his Highcombe rents—no. He drew a hard black line through the name, and the pen spluttered ink all over the page. Not Highcombe. He’d not ask Basil’s family to pay for his bride-gift. He put his head down on his ink-stained fist, and rubbed the place where it ached, the temples from which Ysaud had painted springing horns. He wanted Basil. Basil needed no gold, no jewels; Basil was a fur coverlet in a wooden bed; Basil was a chest full of rare books; Basil was nights and days that flowed into each other without boundary.

“Lord of my heart,” he wrote, “lord of my pulsing blood—I live to offend you and to make good the fault. I live because of you. The woods are thick, but I will find you and kneel at your feet, and you will return me to myself. Please advance me the revenues of whatever you can find that is not already my father’s, something that is mine or will be mine when I have tied myself to the Land.”

WHEN MARCUS FFOLIOT READ THERON’S NOTE, MUCH blackened with crossings-out and insertions, he set out at once for Riverside. It was an uncharacteristic thing for him to do; it was as if Theron’s own impetuousness had infected him. And, indeed, after a little walking had given his fancy a chance to cool, Marcus altered his direction and went instead to a much closer house, the house of his eldest daughter, Diana.

He found her in the nursery, which gave them the pleasure of adoring a very small baby together.

“You’ve heard,” Marcus began, wiping drool off his shoulder, “Lord Theron is getting married.”

“Mother told me. It’s odd; he seems so young.”

Her father smiled. “He’s older than you were when you married Martin.”

Diana shrugged. “Theron isn’t practical. Always with his head in a book, or else helplessly in love with someone—I was going to say, someone unsuitable, but clearly this girl’s not unsuitable. Do you want your lambie?”—this last addressed to the restless baby, who was gnawing on her sleeve. “Da, get his lamb, would you? It’s on the chest.”

“He’s trying to be practical. But, as you say, it doesn’t come naturally.” Marcus handed the lamb to his grandson.

“Yum, yum, my sweetikins! What’s she like, his intended? She doesn’t paint, I hope?” Diana added acerbically.

Marcus chuckled. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask him. You and Isabel, I mean.”

His daughter smiled a private smile. “Is this a
duchess
perhaps or a
Sophia
perhaps?”

“It is a
Ffoliot
perhaps. I don’t want to bore you with details—” She grinned; this was longstanding family code for
It’s none of your business
“—but I think he is not altogether sure of what he wants. He seems to be trying both to please and to annoy his elders. We are useless appendages, my dear, fit only for signing over large sums of money. Which I admit I am very good at. But perhaps—well, you’re near his age. And you’re already married. Theron might benefit from your experience.”

“
And
we know all his tricks. If this is just another stupid crush gone too far, we’ll have it out of him before dinner.”